Welcome to Her Bags Were Packed!

This is an online community with a dual focus on helping women gain confidence to travel on their own and on sharing authentic stories about life, love, trauma, joy, adventure, relationships and anxiety.
This is a place to ask your travel questions, a place to express your fears, a place to get help planning trips, and also a place to find support as you wrestle with your story.
This is a place to be reminded that you’re not alone, that there are more of us here and we all have baggage. I’ll be sharing the stories I am wrestling with, stories of fear, stories of love, stories of heartbreak, stories of victory, and stories that don’t quite have endings yet...

About

As you probably know by now, I am a pretty minimalistic traveler. Most of the time, the only luggage I take with me is a small “personal item” that fits under the seat in front of me. While I have already explained how I pack everything I need for a month of travel in

I can’t believe it but last week was the one year anniversary for Her Bags Were Packed so I thought we’d celebrate this week by looking back at the 5 most popular posts from this year. But before we get to that, I want to highlight some of the accomplishments of this last year. Since

I saw an article today that said AAA is estimating 54.3 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more to celebrate Thanksgiving this week. Maybe it is because we’re headed somewhere familiar or because the intention of the weekend is predetermined but it seems when we travel for the holidays we forget that this is

Yesterday, I got a Facebook message from a friend telling me that she and her husband had just bought tickets to Iceland and asking me for some travel tips. This happens all the time, especially for Iceland, Italy, New York, and Amsterdam, so I figured it was about time I share some of that advice

Last night I went to a beautiful event called Hello Sunshine x Together Live. It’s like a mini conference meets storytelling event. This was my second year attending. In fact, last year’s event is actually what gave me the big push to finally believe in Her Bags Were Packed enough to launch (more on that another

I went to Puerto Rico back in March, just five or six months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit. Leading up to the trip, I wasn’t sure if I should go. Would there be water, food, electricity? Would we be getting in the way of the recovery efforts? Would it be safe? Only after my

One of the main reasons people give for not traveling is not having enough money. While, of course, travel can be expensive – but it doesn’t have to be. Some of you may not know that I choose to only work part-time in a traditional hourly position so that I can devote the rest of

So often we choose to travel to destinations simply because we’ve been told they are the places we’re supposed to go see, places like Times Square, The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum and so many more. Sometimes we forget to stop and ask ourselves if or why we really

People often say to me, “I wish I could travel more, but… “I just don’t have the money…” “You’re fearless… I could never do that…” “Aren’t you worried about being lonely?” If you’re one of those people, please hear me when I say, “You are not alone.” After numerous solo trips, I have come face

Happy Rainy Monday! It turns out that it’s not Always Sunny in Philadelphia but I hope it is in your part of the world. Today I am excited to share with you the third and final post in the Living With Less series. Even though I have followed Megan for years and done my own work on